Home Sweet Homicide

by Craig Rice

  “That’s working all right,” Dinah said. “We’ve got the run of the grounds. But”—she pointed to Police Lieutenant Bill Smith and Sergeant O’Hare on the Sanford front porch—“what are we going to do about them?”

  “Why the heck did they have to pick tonight to come over here?” April muttered. She turned to Archie. “Listen. You and the Mob have gotta do something to get them away.”

  “Oh, corn, corn, corn,” Archie swore. “We gotta do something. Why don’t you do something? And whatter we gonna do?”

  “Well, my gosh,” Dinah said, “you can think of something. Go burn down a house.”

  “Oh, foo!” Archie said. He scampered back down the steps yelling, “Hey, Slukey! Hey, Pinhead! All you guys—”

  “They’ll manage,” April said confidently. “I know the Mob.” She went on through the arbor into the Sanford grounds, Dinah close behind her.

  The two uniformed cops were thoroughly busy, and Sergeant O’Hare had joined them. But as fast as Wendy was chased away from the rosebeds, Joella turned up by the sundial, and then Willy under the avocado tree. The two cops and Sergeant O’Hare had their hands full. But Bill Smith still stood by the front door of the Sanford villa. “Are you sure you planted enough clues to keep the kids busy?” Dinah whispered.

  April nodded. “All over the place. Let’s join the—treasure hunt.”

  They prowled through the shrubbery of the Sanford place while the treasure hunt grew louder. They came on a collection of empty milk bottles, evidently left there by Wallie Sanford. They found a rabbit’s nest, a scout knife Archie had lost three weeks before, Mag’s handkerchief, and a broken coke bottle. April tore a small snag in the blue organdy, and Dinah skinned her nose on a low-hanging branch.

  After fifteen minutes April said, “There’s no use hunting around out here. If there’d been anything hidden outside, I’d have found it while I was hiding the clues this afternoon. We’ve got to get into that house.”

  “Sure,” Dinah said. “But how?” Suddenly she grabbed April’s wrist and said “Listen!”

  A siren went screaming down the road. Then another. A third sounded from a long way off.

  “Another murder!” April gasped.

  “Those weren’t police sirens,” Dinah said. “Those were—Oh, April, look!”

  There was a brilliant red glow just around the bend in the road, and great clouds of smoke. An instant later they could see the flames beyond the trees.

  “Oh, my gosh,” April moaned, “oh, my gosh! Archie thought we meant it!”

  Chapter Ten

  Dinah started to run down the hill toward the road. April grabbed her arm. “Hold everything,” she said. “We might just as well take advantage of it.”

  The Sanford grounds were deserted, except for April and Dinah. Everyone had gone to the fire, including the two uniformed cops, Sergeant O’Hare, and Police Lieutenant Bill Smith. “And the back door is unlocked,” April pointed out.

  “Archie,” Dinah groaned. “Archie! If anyone should find out—”

  “We’ll see to it they don’t,” April said. “Come on!”

  They ran along the edge of the lawn to the back porch. The kitchen door was not only unlocked, but wide open. The kitchen itself was brightly lighted, there was an opened copy of True Detective Mysteries on the table, and the uniformed cop had evidently been making himself a ham sandwich.

  The rest of the house was dark, frighteningly dark. They tiptoed through the butler’s pantry into the dining room, from there into the chintz-hung living room. The living-room floor was covered with paper, covered with wide dark chalk marks. A long oval was drawn on one end of the floor. April shivered.

  “It was right here,” she murmured.

  “Don’t be scared,” Dinah said.

  “Scared!” April hissed. “Me?” Thank goodness her teeth had stopped chattering. “Have you got your flashlight?”

  Dinah nodded. “But I’m not going to use it unless we have to. It would attract attention.” She paused. “Maybe this is all a waste of time. The police must have searched the house pretty thoroughly.”

  April sniffed. “They’re men,” she said scornfully. “They wouldn’t have any idea where a woman would hide things. Just stop and think. Where does Mother hide stuff, like birthday presents, and letters from the school principal, and books she thinks we oughtn’t to read?”

  “Well,” Dinah said, thinking. “In the bottom of the bathroom laundry hamper, and her hatbox, and under her mattress, and behind her dressing-table mirror, and under the dining-room rug, and back of Grandfather’s picture, and in the box that has her old evening dress, and behind the old encyclopedia in the upstairs bookshelves. And sometimes under that tapestry thing over the stairs.”

  “See what I mean?” April said encouragingly. “Imagine the police looking in places like those!”

  They crept up the stairs and began going slowly and stealthily through the house. It showed evidences of a police search. Everything had been taken out of the late Flora Sanford’s desk, dressing table, and bureau drawers. A little wall safe had been opened.

  “Maybe if there was something here, it’s been found already,” Dinah said.

  “Well, we can try, can’t we?” April said. She looked under the rug.

  “Mrs. Sanford sure must have used plenty of make-up,” Dinah commented, examining the dresser. “Just look at all those jars and stuff.”

  “We’re not here looking for beauty hints,” April said, moving a picture.

  Another siren went by. The red glow from the house down the street brightened the walls of Flora Sanford’s dressing room. Dinah glanced wistfully toward the window. “It looks like a really big fire.”

  “You can go to a fire any time,” April said coldly. Suddenly she rose from her investigation of the mattress. “Dinah. The fire. If Mother—”

  They ran to the window and looked out. Across the gardens they could see a lighted window, and Mother, bent over her typewriter. They drew a mutual sigh of relief.

  “Well, after all, she worked right through an earthquake once,” Dinah said. “Remember? When a couple of windows got broken, and the downstairs doors jammed, and a house down the street collapsed. There was an awful noise.”

  “And we were so scared,” April said reminiscently. She giggled. “And we ran upstairs to see if Mother was all right, and she was out in the hall and she said, ‘Children! Please stop slamming doors!’ ”

  Dinah giggled. Then she sobered. “April. If Archie gets in any trouble over this.”

  “He won’t,” April said. “And get moving. Search.”

  There was nothing to be found in the dressing room, Flora Sanford’s room, or the guest room.

  Ten minutes later April said, “We’re a couple of dopes. Listen, if she had something incriminating hidden here any place, she wouldn’t have hidden it in her own room. She’d have hidden it in his room, so that if anything ever happened, he’d get the blame. She was that kind of a babe.”

  They went into Wallie Sanford’s room. It was a sharp contrast to the guest room, lush with rose-printed paper, or Flora Sanford’s room, with its gray-and-blue taffeta draperies and full-length mirrors. It was a very ordinary little room, with a cheap maple bedroom set and monk’s cloth curtains.

  “Not the sort of stuff I’d have imagined he’d pick out,” Dinah commented.

  “Stupe,” April said. “She picked it out. It was her money, remember.”

  They continued searching. Suddenly Dinah said, “While we’re here—Mr. Sanford needs a clean shirt and some, clean socks. I can carry them out under my blouse and slip them to him later.”

  “Get his razor, too, while you’re at it,” April said. “We’ll get him some soap tomorrow.”

  Five minutes later April located the big Manila envelope back of the dresser mirror. She gave a low whistle and looked inside. Dinah turned on the flashlight, carefully shielding it from the window. There was a little notebook, there were newspaper clippi
ngs, there were odds and ends of letters. April ran through them hurriedly, catching familiar names here and there. Cherington. Walker. Holbrook. Sanford.

  “Dinah, I think this is it!”

  Dinah looked it over, suddenly gasped. “My gosh! April! That clipping. Something about—Carstairs.” She looked closer. “Yes it is, Marian Carstairs.”

  “Oh, no!” April moaned. She looked. Then she looked up at Dinah, white-faced. “We’ll take this home and read it later.” She shoved the papers and clippings back and closed the envelope.

  Dinah said, between clenched teeth, “Well, anyway, Mother couldn’t have—done it. Because when we heard the shots, she was typing—” She broke off and stared at April.

  They were remembering the same thing. One of Mother’s books, one of the Clark Cameron books. The murderer had a perfect alibi. His landlady and half a dozen other people had heard him operating a typewriter at the time the crime was committed. And then it turned out he’d made records on a home recorder of himself typing, and set them up on an automatic phonograph that played ten records at a time.

  “Don’t be silly,” April said. “We haven’t got a recording machine, and our phonograph only plays one record at a time and you have to wind it up in the middle of the record, anyway.”

  “And when we went upstairs, right after the shots,” Dinah said, “she was sitting right there typing.”

  “Besides,” April said firmly, “Mother would never do anything she could be blackmailed for.” She looked at the envelope and said, “How are we going to get this out of here, in case we run into anybody?”

  “You hide it,” Dinah said.

  “Under this dress?” April said. “Do I look like a magician?”

  “All right,” Dinah said. She grabbed the envelope and stuffed it into her blouse. “What with this, and Wallie Sanford’s shirt and socks and razor—”

  April looked at her in mock criticism and said, “You could sneak out a couple of mattresses too, if you really put your mind to it.”

  “Oh, shut up,” Dinah said sharply. “And let’s get out of here. I’m worried. My gosh, we’ve got to make sure Archie is all right. And with the kids running around loose and everything—” She switched off the flashlight. “Come on, April.”

  They moved silently along the upstairs hall. Through the windows they could still see a red glow.

  “A really swell fire,” April muttered bitterly, “and we have to miss it.”

  “In a good cause,” Dinah reminded her. Then, “Sssh!”

  There were faint sounds from downstairs. Someone moving about, quietly, cautiously. Then there was a sound at the front door, someone working on the lock. Suddenly, a small explosion, and the sound of breaking glass. Dinah and April retreated up the upstairs hall and looked out the window.

  A man was running across the lawn, away from the house. He paused, halfway across, looked back, and then went on. His face, in the moonlight, was clearly recognizable. The man who didn’t exist. Rupert van Deusen. April smothered a gasp.

  “Who’s he?” Dinah whispered.

  “A suspect, no doubt,” April whispered back. Her teeth were really chattering now.

  They stood for a minute, listening. The soft sounds from downstairs began again. Sounds as of someone searching in the dark. Now and then there was a faint glow from a flashlight.

  “Shall we hide?” Dinah breathed.

  April shook her head. “No place. If we have to, we’ll get out on the roof, and slide down the drainpipe. I hope there is a drainpipe.”

  There was a motion at the foot of the stairs. The two girls stood frozen, staring over the railing. There was a dark figure that paused suddenly, turned, and stood motionless for an instant. They could see his face, lighted by the combination of moonlight and fireglow that came in through the windows. A dark, thin face, under a snap-brim hat. A frightened face, though the moonlight fell on something shiny in his hand. Dinah pulled April back from the stair rail. There was a window, right behind them, that opened on the roof.

  Then they heard the shot. A shot, a strange little bumping sound. And silence.

  The two girls ran back to the railing. There was what might have been a shadow on the floor at the foot of the stairs. They could see a snap-brim hat rolled a little away from the shadow, and the shiny gun lying on the rug. From somewhere downstairs a door closed, softly.

  “We’re getting out of here,” Dinah gasped hoarsely. “If there isn’t a drainpipe, we’ll jump.”

  There was better than a drainpipe, there was a vine trellis. They scrambled down it, half climbing, half sliding, quickly and quietly as kittens, and ran around the corner of the house into the comforting shelter of the shadows.

  “Don’t—drop—that stuff,” April said.

  Dinah panted, “Don’t worry. I’ve got it.”

  They slowed down as they reached the back porch of the Sanford house. It seemed safe here, and normal. Mother by her window, still typing. The moonlight on the Sanford lawn. The red glow on the sky was dimmer now.

  “Wait a minute,” April whispered. She caught Dinah by the elbow. “Wait!”

  “For gosh sakes,” Dinah hissed. “Let’s beat it, quick.”

  “No. There was a murder. We heard it. We almost saw it. Remember that guy in Mother’s book who said, ‘It is almost impossible to commit a murder successfully without committing, at least, a second one.’ Dinah, the murderer is right there in that house, right now.”

  Dinah said, “If we sneak around the corner here we can look in the sun-room windows. But be careful. Darn this envelope, it’s scratching my sunburn. Why did you have to wear that organdy dress, anyway.”

  “Quiet,” April said.

  They crept around the corner of the house and moved silently up to the sun-room windows. Moonlight and street light combined to make the Sanford living room as bright as day. They could see the sun room, the living room, and the hall. They could see the curving staircase and the landing. But there wasn’t any dark shadow sprawled at the foot of the stairs, nor any snap-brim hat rolled onto the floor, nor any shiny gun on the carpet. There was nothing, nothing at all.

  “Dinah,” April said, “you’re right. Let’s beat it. Fast.” She choked. “Maybe we dreamed it.”

  “Nonsense,” Dinah said sharply. Too sharply. “He just wasn’t murdered, that’s all. While we were climbing down the trellis, he just got up and walked off.” As though to corroborate her theory, a car that had evidently been parked in the alley back of the Sanford house started its motor and drove away.

  “See!” Dinah said triumphantly. “Now, for gosh sakes, let’s get this stuff home and hide it, and get back to the gang.”

  They skirted the deserted lawn and dove through the arbor. There wasn’t a soul in sight, there were still excited sounds from the scene of the fire. And the sound of fast, furious typing from upstairs.

  “We’ll stick it in our laundry bag until the kids have gone home,” Dinah began. “Then—”

  “Pssst,” April whispered.

  Police Lieutenant Bill Smith and Sergeant O’Hare were coming up the garden steps. They stopped, looked at the two girls, and Bill Smith broke off in the middle of a sentence, leaving the words “Never should have left the place unguarded” dangling in the air.

  April remembered something she’d read about the best defense, and decided to attack. She said indignantly, “Where do you think you’re going, across our front yard?”

  “Short cut, little lady,” O’Hare panted. He wasn’t used to climbing steps.

  Dinah chimed in quick. “How was the fire? Where was it? How did it start?”

  “Under control,” O’Hare said. He paused, mopping his brow, glad for the excuse to rest for an instant. “Vacant house on Maple Drive. Somebody set it.”

  “My gosh,” April said. “That’s against the law.” Oh, Archie, she thought, how could you!

  “What’ll you do to the guy who started it, if you catch him?” Dinah asked.

&
nbsp; “Twenty years in Alcatraz,” O’Hare said. He finally caught his breath and added, “Don’t worry, we’ll catch him, all right.”

  “Oh!” Dinah said. And then, “Oh!”

  Police Lieutenant Bill Smith’s neat gray suit was covered with dust and brambles. There were a few remnants of dead leaves in his hair and a scratch down one cheek. He looked jumping mad. He glared at the bulge the Manila envelope made under Dinah’s blouse and said, “What—”

  April looked with startled concern at Bill Smith and said, “Whatever happened to you?”

  “One of your brother’s little friends tripped me,” Bill Smith said. “Deliberately.”

  “Don’t let that worry you,” April said, “they do that to us all the time.” Something had to be done fast to keep Bill Smith and Sergeant O’Hare from discovering that Dinah was carrying the important evidence under her sweater. “All the time,” she repeated, “but only when they stand on their hands and flap their ears.”

  “Especially every other Thursday,” Dinah said, catching on quick.

  “But the round corners make it different,” April added. “Oh, no, they don’t, only when it’s raining.”

  “But you can’t get that any more.” April began speeding it up. “Besides, the rain makes it turn purple.”

  “No it doesn’t, not if you look at it cross-eyed.” Dinah speeded up, too.

  “Oh, but if you do that, it’ll make the sun go down.”

  “Not if the next two weeks are going to be Saturdays.” “Just a minute,” Sergeant O’Hare said. Bill Smith looked bewildered.

  April gave Dinah a nudge. They retreated halfway up the front steps. “We’re not crazy,” April said innocently. She put a forefinger to her lower lip and went, “B-b-b-b-b- b-b-b-b-b-b!”

  Sergeant O’Hare chuckled. He couldn’t help it. He said, “Take it easy, Smith. I’ve raised nine of my own, and I know—”

  Bill Smith didn’t take it easy. He strode into the moonlit rectangle of lawn, glared at Dinah and April and said, “Where’s your Mother?”

  “She’s working,” April said icily and with vast dignity, “and she can’t be disturbed.”